Spencer nicely balances family drama with old-fashioned detection.
A publisher battles to overcome a cascading barrage of losses.
When Rob Conroy’s grandfather Charlie started his furniture company after the war, he remembered one thing from his military service: Always establish a clear chain of command. As Conroy Enterprises grew and diversified, he parceled out the day-to-day management of various divisions to whomever he thought would run them best while keeping control of the corporation tightly in his own hands. He gave Rob’s brother, John, Mid-Cheshire Mechanical, a maintenance company that provides enough salary and prestige to suit John’s ambitious wife, Lydia. And he saved Cormorant Publishing, a small independent press, for Rob, an Oxford graduate. With the help of a blockbuster first novel from the unknown Andy McBride, Cormorant enjoys modest success. But after Rob’s brother, father, and uncle are all killed in a car crash on their way to an acquisition meeting with Western Haulage, Rob has to fight his cousin to maintain control of his press because the line of succession in his grandfather’s will leaves control of the family empire to his Uncle Tony, and on Tony’s death, to his son, Philip. Losing most of his family is just the latest blow for Rob, whose college girlfriend, Jill, was killed during their first summer together. As he heals from the car crash, he’s preparing for another loss: Marie O’Hara, the first woman he’s been attracted to since Jill, has dropped out of sight. But Chief Inspector Owen Flint has more bad news for his old friend Rob: The crash was no accident, and there’s every reason to believe that whoever cut the brake lines on the car will come back for the survivors.
Spencer nicely balances family drama with old-fashioned detection.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7278-9094-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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